The decision comes almost a year after The United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1500 contested the 137-85 vote against unionization in June 2011. It argued that Target illegally intimidated workers for months leading up to the vote. Target denied the allegations. [...]

“Target completely poisoned the democratic process from day one,” said Patrick Purcell, assistant to the president of the UFCW Local 1500 in an interview with The Associated Press. “And now a judge agreed with everything we said.”

UFCW workers complained of intimidation immediately after the vote last year, and in November, the NLRB found additional evidence that Target officials illegally threatened to close the store if workers organized. It also found that Target supervisors “interrogated workers about their union activity,” complains the judge apparently found to be true.

In March, Target announced that it was temporarily close the store for six months for renovations, a move workers alleged was in retaliation for their organization efforts (1,100 Target stores are undergoing renovations nationwide, but most will remain open throughout the process). According to workers who filed the complaint, those who were the most vocal in their union support were deemed ineligible for transfers to other stores or for re-hire once the store re-opened, and they were given paltry severance packages to boot.

Target, however, says it “respectfully disagrees” with the decision and that its actions leading up to the election were “fair and legal.”

Those companies, which include Wal-Mart Stores Inc., WMT +2.70% International Paper Co., Honeywell International Inc. and United Parcel Service Inc., boosted their employment at home by 3.1%, or 113,000 jobs, between 2009 and 2011, the same rate of increase as the nation’s other employers. But they also added more than 333,000 jobs in their far-flung—and faster-growing— foreign operations.

The companies included in the analysis were the largest of those that disclose their U.S. and non-U.S. employment in annual securities filings. All of them have at least 50,000 employees. Collectively, they employed roughly 6.4 million workers world-wide last year, up 7.7% from two years earlier. Over the same period, the total number of U.S. jobs increased 3.1%, according to the Labor Department.

Many of the companies are adding jobs in the U.S. but adding even more overseas — reversing a trend from a decade ago in which they were outsourcing American jobs to other countries. But some companies, like Wal-Mart, have boosted overseas employment while maintaining flat job growth in the U.S., and others, like UPS, have slashed jobs at home even while adding them in other countries:

A similar Wall Street Journal report last April found that America’s largest multinational corporations outsourced more than 2.4 million jobs over the last decade, even as they cut their overall workforces by 2.9 million.

President Obama has proposed a tax credit to encourage businesses to bring jobs from overseas back to the United States in order to relieve high unemployment and boost economic growth. Republicans and corporations, meanwhile, have blamed outsourcing on high taxes, even though corporations pay less in America than they would in most of the developed world.

One former executive told the Times about how Walmart employees brought envelopes of cash to government officials in Mexico in order to boost the company’s expansion:

The Times examination included more than 15 hours of interviews with the former executive, Sergio Cicero Zapata, who resigned from Wal-Mart de Mexico in 2004 after nearly a decade in the company’s real estate department.

In the interviews, Mr. Cicero recounted how he had helped organize years of payoffs. He described personally dispatching two trusted outside lawyers to deliver envelopes of cash to government officials. They targeted mayors and city council members, obscure urban planners, low-level bureaucrats who issued permits — anyone with the power to thwart Wal-Mart’s growth. The bribes, he said, bought zoning approvals, reductions in environmental impact fees and the allegiance of neighborhood leaders.

Maritza Munich, former general counsel of Wamart International, also resigned in 2006, after pushing Walmart executives to complete an investigation into the accounts of bribery. Walmart, however, quashed the investigation. The acts of bribery could be violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which makes it a crime for American corporations to bribe foreign officials. The Department of Justice is responsible for investigating potential violations of the act.

Walmart responded to the story with a lengthy statement, saying “the investigation is ongoing and we don’t have a full explanation of what happened. It would be inappropriate for us to comment further on the specific allegations until we have finished the investigation.” Walmart International has previously faced criticism for its treatment of workers and mislabeling of products.

Photo by Flickr user Joseph Seal

In fact, the use of offshore tax havens by corporations costs the government $60 billion annually. Such tax dodging gives multinational corporations a leg up on smaller firms that can’t avoid their tax bills, whether its through higher taxes or fewer services. According to a new report from U.S. PIRG, the cost of corporate tax havens amounts to $2,116 for every small business in America:

Instead of competing on a level playing field, small businesses and those without offshore tax havens must pick up the extra tax tab and compete against the artificially lower costs of multinational companies using tax havens.

To illustrate that burden, this paper looks at how much more the average small business tax bill would need to be to cover the $60 billion in federal revenues estimated lost each year from multinational corporations using offshore tax havens. We define a small business as one with less than 100 employees, using Census Bureau data on the number of such businesses. Based on the number of small businesses in the United States, each would need to pay an additional $2,116 in taxes to shoulder this burden.

“When corporations shirk their tax burden by shifting profits legitimately made in the U.S. to offshore tax havens like the Caymans, the rest of us must pick up the tab through either cuts to public spending priorities, higher taxes, or more debt,” said U.S. PIRG’s Dan Smith, a co-author of the report. A poll commissioned by the American Sustainable Business Council, the Main Street Alliance, and the Small Business Majority — organizations seeking to level the playing field between small and large businesses — found that more than 90 percent of small business owners believe that corporate tax havens are a problem, while “three-quarters of respondents agree that their small business is harmed when loopholes allow big corporations to avoid taxes.”

President Obama has been trying, since he came into office, to crack down on some of the offshore tax havens utilized by corporations, but has been stopped by conservatives and corporate lobbying every time. Instead, Republicans have designed a “small business tax cut” that would actually further enrich hedge fund managers, sports teams, and millionaires.

For some people, the personal income taxes they see deducted from their paychecks aren’t supporting public services. Indeed, this is true for workers at more than 2,700 companies in 16 states.

Nearly $700 million is getting diverted each year. And it is very unlikely that the affected workers are aware, given that no state requires that the diversion be disclosed on pay stubs.

Where is the money going? To the employers of those workers. A growing number of states are diverting revenue traditionally devoted to funding essential government services to pay for lavish subsidy awards to corporations for job creation or sometimes simply job retention. The practice of redirecting large portions of the state personal income tax (PIT) withholding deducted from paychecks means many workers are, in effect, paying taxes to their boss.

Some states, such as Kentucy and Missouri, allow companies participating in certain programs to simply keep their own workers’ tax payments, never remitting them to the state. Others, such as New Jersey and North Carolina, hand the tax payments over to the state and then receive a check later.

As Reuters’ David Cay Johnston noted, allowing companies to keep their employees’ tax payments is a simple way for politicians to hand out corporate goodies without having the government itself write a check. “These deals typify corporate socialism, in which business gains are privatized and costs socialized,” he wrote. And the programs often turn into boondoggles, with states not delivering on the jobs they promised in return for pocketing their employee’s taxes.

As we’ve noted time and again, providing corporations with subsidies in order to entice them into creating jobs is a failed strategy. The fact that companies are being allowed to directly pocket their own workers taxes is just adding insult to injury.

Major corporations like Ford, Halliburton, Kraft, and others either require or recommend that their CEOs travel on private jets, for both business and personal travel, for “security reasons.” Some corporations also pay for home security systems, 24-hour surveillance, chauffeurs, and other perks, all in the name of safety. But as New York Times DealBook columnist Steven M. Davidoff notes, the CEOs aren’t really in imminent danger. Instead, paying for security and private travel “is a common corporate tax trick“:

It’s a different case for personal travel. In those cases, chief executives are required to pay income tax on the imputed portion of the flight — that is, the amount the company paid for the flight. So a chief executive who is a frequent flier can rack up a rather large tax bill.

Luckily, the tax code offers executives a break.

If an outside security consultant determines that executives need a private jet and other services for their safety, the Internal Revenue Service cuts corporate chieftains a break. In such cases, the chief executive will pay a reduced tax bill or sometimes no tax at all.

Corporate taxes in the U.S. have fallen to a 40-year low, while the wealthiest Americans are paying historically low tax rates. And yet, both groups are finding new ways to pay even less in taxes, even if it means making actual taxpayers subsidize their travel and “security.”

It was, of course, tragic that Community went on a long hiatus if only for the show’s prospects and for our collective enjoyment. But who knew that the show’s long absence from airways denied us a hilarious sitcom riff on Mitt Romney’s declaration in Iowa last summer that “corporations are people, my friend.” Because it’s hard to imagine a show other than Community where an actual personification of a corporation—in this case, a hunky blond named Subway who wants to open a non-profit shelter for disabled animals, reads 1984, and pushes all of Britta Perry’s buttons—would walk jauntily onto the scene. Especially at a time when the show’s deepest friendship is in the middle of a reassessment.

Subway’s appearance on the show is a continuation of the plot that began with Community‘s return: Shirley wanted to own a sandwich shop, but the Dean circumvented her by welcoming a Subway franchise onto campus. Subway (the person) is a way of getting around the Greendale bylaw that requires any on-campus business to be 51-percent student owned. It’s terrific not only for Community to get a chance to make a bid for some of the product placement money liberated by the end of Chuck‘s run on NBC, but for Britta to get a truly entertaining love interest who wasn’t part of the main cast. Britta gets a bad rap for being a buzz-kill, but I appreciate the show acknowledging that it may only be within the disastrous dynamics of the study group that she’s a bore, and there’s a place where her passion is a better fit, and where there’s someone who shares her values and is available for gratifyingly kinky sex.

In keeping with, though in a much more veiled key, I thought it was a nice touch that, as Troy and Abed are facing serious problems in their friendship, Air Conditioning Repair School Dean Laybourne showed up to drive a wedge between them along the lines of their aspirations. Community‘s done a nice job of suggesting that blue-collar jobs can be not just legitimately rewarding but a calling and an art as high as filmmaking. And Laybourne sought to divide his prized target student from his best friends by playing with that idea. To Troy, he implies that Inspector Spacetime and Abed don’t have sufficient respect for Constable Reggie and Troy, that they devalue the work and creativity of the world’s journeymen. And Laybourne exploited Abed’s elitism and nerdery, suggesting that Constable Reggie—and Troy—are a drag on Inspector Spacetime’s wild adventurism and creative spirit.

And if this does escalate to full-scale war, I’m Team Troy and Team Blanket Fort. As much as it’s probably time for Abed to learn some realistic life skills and to experience some failures, it’s also probably time for Troy, now that his friendship with Abed has liberated him from jerky jockdom, to figure out an identity that’s more authentically his own.

– Frisco, TX: $3.7 million

– Brownsville, TX: $5.3 million

– Lenexa, KS: $3.9 million

– Redmond, OR: $1.3 million

These subsidies took several forms, including sales tax exemptions, salary supplements for workers, and job training money. “T-Mobile USA’s decision to close seven call centers, employing 3,300 workers, is a bad one. It harms workers and communities, and in several locations, abuses taxpayers who provided funds to the company in exchange for employment and economic development,” said the Communication Workers of America.

T-Mobile is certainly not the first corporation to receive subsidies and then cut a community loose. Mega-manufacturer Boeing took a heap of taxpayer money and received significant local help in winning a $35 billion contract before bailing on Wichita, Kansas. Sears will lay off 100 workers after receiving millions from Illinois (and can lay off another 1,750, thanks to the terrible terms to which Illinois agreed).

Fortunately, several of the subsidies received by T-Mobile came with clawback provisions, so officials in the states affected at least stand a chance of recouping some of the money they’ve lost. “The officials in those states should investigate the possibility of recapturing as much of those millions of dollars that were paid out as possible,” said Phillip Mattera, Research Director of Good Jobs First. “The taxpayers didn’t get all that they paid for. They lost those millions of dollars in revenues in the expectation that permanent jobs would be created.”

For years, Target has enjoyed a reputation as the antithesis of Walmart. But like its big box counterpart, Target is notoriously anti-union — the company reportedly shows new hires a video warning against unionizing, threatening them with fewer promotions and less flexible hours if they were to organize.

When the workers in Valley Stream came forward with the idea of organizing under United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1500, Target ramped up its efforts to stifle the movement. Ultimately, the workers’ vote to unionize failed, due in large part to intimidation tactics employed by the company to strong-arm them into caving. In fact, Target is currently under investigation by the National Labor Relations Board for illegally interrogating and threatening Valley Stream employees.

Yet, Target’s campaign against the workers in Valley Stream presses forward. Last week, company management informed employees at the Valley Stream location that the store will be temporarily closed for six-months for renovations. Employees feel the move is in retaliation for their attempts to unionize; while the Valley Stream location is one of 1,100 other stores currently undergoing renovations, the majority of those locations are slated to remain open throughout.

And while “eligible employees” have been invited to transfer to other Target branches or take an unpaid leave of absence until renovations have been completed, “the most vocal pro-union employees have not been deemed eligible to return:”

Sonia Williams, one of the most active pro-union employees who has frequently spoken to the media, including The Huffington Post, found out last week that she wasn’t eligible to transfer or apply for unpaid leave, she said. She was offered, however, a severance package for her nearly 10 years of work that amounts, after taxes, to about $800, Williams said.

Management told her she was “on final warning,” but did not explain why, Williams said, noting that she had received no prior written or oral notice. Management had met with her once previously about one matter but her manager told her it had been resolved, she said.

UFCW Local 1500 is seeking to block the closure and possibly overturn the results of last year’s election with the aim of conducting a new vote. “This is just as horrible as it gets,” said Pat Purcell, assistant to the president of Local 1500. “It’s right out of the Walmart playbook. That store is being closed in retaliation for union activities of workers.” A Target spokeswoman, on the other hand, maintains that the plans for remodeling have been in the works for “a year and a half or two,” conveniently predating the union’s campaign.

– Fatima Najiy

Sears Holdings Corp. paid its chief executive $9.9 million last year, including incentives the ailing department store operator offered to lure the former technology executive, according to an Associated Press analysis of a regulatory filing.

Lou D’Ambrosio, who became Sears’ CEO in February 2011, received a signing bonus of $150,000 plus a base salary of $930,769 and $8 million in stock awards, according to a filing the company made Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

D’Ambrosio got another $852,037 in perks, including $803,856 for charter and commercial airfare and ground transportation to commute from greater Philadelphia, where he lives, to Hoffman Estates, Ill., where Sears is based. And he received $29,985 for temporary housing in Hoffman Estates. Sears paid part of the income taxes due on those benefits.

Of course, it’s the company’s prerogative to pay its CEO this much. But at the same time that it was doling out perks to D’Ambrosio, Sears was planning to lay off thousands of workers. Sears has announced that it will be closing 173 stores this year — up from previous estimates of 120 stores — which means that nearly 14,000 workers could be seeing a pink slip.

Adding insult to injury, Sears was also pocketing millions of dollars in tax incentives from the state of Illinois, even as it fired Illinois workers. In fact, under the terrible deal that the state signed with the retail giant, Sears can lay off another 1,750 Illinois workers without losing its taxpayer largesse. But perhaps bilking a state of its needed tax revenue is what Sears pays D’Ambrosio the big bucks for.

One of the loudest corporate voices arguing against the bank’s reauthorization is Delta Airlines, while one of the loudest arguing against it in Congress is House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA). And as Politico noted today, Delta and Cantor have more than this policy agreement in common:

A sleepy Export-Import Bank debate in Congress has blossomed into a corporate political brawl matching the powerful Boeing Co. lobby against Delta Air Lines, represented here by a close friend and supporter of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

The issues are bigger than the personalities, affecting billions of dollars in U.S.-backed loan guarantees supporting the overseas sale of Boeing aircraft. But with pivotal Senate votes now scheduled for Tuesday, Cantor is without a doubt the crucial broker for the House. And Boeing is hammering away at his close ties with Delta lobbyist and confidante Andrea Newman — even as it fields a small army of its own.

If it seems David vs. Goliath, Newman, as Delta’s senior vice president for government affairs, comes with a BlackBerry instead of a slingshot. In an anecdote Cantor’s office denied Friday, he is said to have once emailed her about an aviation bill while still in a members-only meeting with the White House on the subject. And the two enjoy what’s described as a genuine family — University of Michigan — friendship even as she helps him raise campaign funds.

In addition to gumming up the works on the ExIm bank, Delta has been on the wrong side of many a policy fight recently. It’s worst work was pushing Republicans to include a union-busting provision in a bill reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration, while ultimately led to an FAA shutdown.

As CAP’s Sabina Dewan has explained, the ExIM bank (yes, in addition to providing some help to giant manufacturers like Boeing) is crucial for smaller exporters that have a hard time accessing financing. But it’s evidently more important for Cantor and crew to throw Delta yet another bone, at the expense of the wider economy.

Companies are improving margins and generating profits as wage growth for the American worker lags behind the prices of goods and services…While benefiting the bottom line for businesses, the decline in inflation-adjusted wages bodes ill for the sustainability of economic growth as consumers may eventually be forced to cut back. [...]

Of the 394 companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index that have reported since Jan. 9, earnings for the quarter ended Dec. 31 increased 5.1 percent on average and beat analyst estimates by 3.2 percent. Some 70 percent of the companies have posted better-than-projected results.

This pattern has become all too familiar during the slow economic recovery. In fact, real wages fell in 2011, despite record corporate profits. “There’s never been a postwar era in which unemployment has been this high for this long,” explained labor economist Gary Burtless. “Workers are in a very weak bargaining position.”

Between 2009 and 2011, 88 percent of national income growth went to corporate profits, while just 1 percent went to wages, a stat that is “historically unprecedented.”

Tax law says that if a corporation issues options for employees to buy the company’s stock in the future for its price when the option issued, then if the stock has gone up in value when employees exercise the options, the company gets to deduct the difference between what the employee bought it for and its market price.

When, as Facebook expects, the 187 million stock options are cashed in this year, Facebook will get $7.5 billion in tax deductions (which will reduce the company’s federal and state taxes by $3 billion). According to Facebook, these tax deductions should exceed the company’s U.S. taxable 2012 income and result in a net operating loss (NOL) that can then be carried back to the preceding two years to offset its past taxes, resulting in a refund of up to $500 million.

Facebook’s filing papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission confirm as much:

Option exercise activity would generate a corporate income tax deduction [that] exceeds our other U.S. taxable income [and] will result in a net operating loss (NOL) that can be carried back to the preceding two years to offset our taxable income for U.S. federal income tax purposes, as well as in some states, which would allow us to receive a refund of some of the corporate income taxes we paid in those years. Based on the assumptions above, we anticipate that this refund could be up to $500 million.

“Due to the stock option loophole, Facebook may not pay any corporate income taxes on its profits for a generation,” said Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI). “It isn’t right, and we can’t afford it.” The Treasury Department estimates that it loses about $2 billion per year due to companies using this stock option loophole to avoid taxes.

The resolution was a response to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling. While advocates acknowledged the council’s vote has no legal authority, they said it was nonetheless important symbolism:

“I can’t think of a more important thing to talk about than democracy. It is being threatened,” said Eric Johnson, a small-business owner from Portland. “You need to help us be heard. There is no more important issue.”

Anna Trevorrow said, “It is absolutely the business of the City Council. The community has come together and asked you to make a statement.”

Mayor Michael Brennan, along with [Councilor David] Marshall and councilors Kevin Donoghue, John Anton, Jill Duson and Nicholas Mavodones, supported the resolution.

The measure’s sponsor said the Occupy Wall Street movement inspired him to submit the non-binding resolution. Maine’s two congressmen, Rep. Mike Michaud (D) and Chellie Pingree (D) have both been critical of the Citizens decision, as has Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME).

Los Angeles, New York City, and a handful of cities held similar votes last year.

The company that Amy worked for before her breakdown, and that she finds herself attempting to reform, is literally called Abaddon, after the place of destruction in Jewish religious texts and the king of the Pit in Revelation. Amy hopes to implement a corporate responsibility program when she comes back to work after her stint in rehab, but instead finds herself in the basement, consigned to a program for people the company considers kooks, but who they can’t fire. When she tries to convince HR to give her a task force or let her act as a community liaison by giving the department head a printout of stories about Abaddon’s environmental and labor problems, the woman is actively frightened that talking about those issues will get them both fired. Amy’s former assistant shuts her down when Amy suggests that they could be getting into bed with a company responsible for industrial accidents in India. The inertia and terror are deep.

And when Amy tries to get a job with a non-profit, she’s devastated to learn that the salary on offer at a place where she thinks she’d fit in is $26,000, just $2,000 more than her bill from the rehab center. “I can’t live on $26,000 a year. I’m in debt, I’m living with my mother,” Amy cries to the man interviewing her for a job at a homeless shelter. “There are all these things I want to do. And I can’t. And it’s so frustrating.” Of course it is. And it’s a huge problem that we can’t make socially responsible and socially fulfilling work financially rewarding, much less viable, for people with debt and bills.

Payday loan interest rates in the Show Me State average nearly 60 percentage points higher than the rest of the nation, 445 percent to 391 percent. Fed up with the disastrous effect that such predatory lending is having on poorer Missourians, a group of citizens, religious groups and civic organizations are gathering signatures for a proposed November ballot initiative that would restrict payday lending interest rates in the state to 36 percent.

Payday lending companies, ruffled by the prospect of being able to charge a mere 36 percent interest rate, have teamed up to fight the initiative. Two weeks ago, a new group – Stand Up Missouri – emerged, purporting to represent “consumers, businesses, civic groups, and faith-based organizations.” However, a look at their finance records reveals that the group is funded – to the tune of $216,000 – by just seven payday lending corporations, including Tower Loan, Western Shamrock Corporation, and Brundage Management Company. The front group’s CEO and chairman, Tom Hudgins, is the vice president of Western Shamrock Corporation.

In its first two weeks of existence, Stand Up Missouri has already taken an Orwellian approach to the term “payday lending” – they prefer the phrase “traditional installment loan” – and invoked the Civil Rights Era to defend why payday lenders ought to be allowed to gouge consumers. An ad on their homepage currently explains to viewers how payday lenders are just like Dr. King and Civil Rights Era marchers:

AD: You had poor people who followed Dr. King and walked with him hundreds of miles because they believed in civil rights that much. In this day and time, when can we say we’ve seen something like that where people are willing to leave their job to support something that they believe in? We have that statement, “actions speak louder than words,” and that’s why I’m here. That’s why it was important for me to take time off to be here because I believe wholeheartedly in the company that believes in me.”

Stand Up Missouri joins another pro-payday lending group in the state called Missourians for Equal Credit Opportunity, which has used a loophole in campaign finance law to hide whoever or whatever corporation(s) gave $600,000 to combat the initiative.

It’s not difficult to see why payday lenders are fighting the consumer effort so vociferously. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch details just how ubiquitous payday lending has become in Missouri: “In 2010, there were about 1,040 payday loan stores in Missouri, according to the Missouri Division of Finance. Missouri is second only to Tennessee among its neighbors in the number of licensed payday lenders. Some 2.43 million payday loans were made in Missouri in 2010.”

The proposed 36 percent interest rate cap is also not without precedent. Until the mid-1990s, Missouri law restricted lenders to a 28 percent ceiling.

Americans across the country are voicing their concerns with Lowe’s prejudice. Religious advocates and even entertainers including Kal Penn, Russell Simmons, and Mia Farrow are urging a boycott of the company. So incensed over Loew’s “un-American” and “naked religious bigotry,” California state Sen. Ted Lieu (D) is boycotting the company and is looking into (unlikely) legal ramifications of Lowe’s decision:

“Lowe’s is engaged in religious discrimination… it is utter nonsense, it is religious bigotry, and I’m just stunned that Lowe’s pulled their advertising,” he said. “Those views from the Florida Family Association are completely bigoted.” [...]

“If the show was called All-American Asian, or All-American Jew or All-American Latino, don’t you think the outcry would be a lot different? For some reason, people seem to think that it’s okay to discriminate against Muslim-Americans, and I’m just trying to say, ‘no, it’s not,’” he said.

Other lawmakers, including Muslim pioneers, are equally disgusted with the company:

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN): One of two Muslim House representatives, Ellison blasted Lowe’s for choosing “to uphold the beliefs of a fringe hate group and not the creed of The First Amendment.” He added, “Corporate America needs to take a stand against these anti-Muslim fringe groups and stand up for what is right because this is what it means to be an America.”

Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN): Also a Muslim representative, Carson said Lowe’s decision “runs contrary to our American ideal of combating expressions of hate and division while defending those oppressed by intolerance.”

Rep. John Conyers (D-MI): A strong advocate against religious discrimination and the representative of the town in which the series is filmed, Conyers demanded the Lowe’s “unequivocally apologize to the Muslim and Arab American community and strongly repudiate the intolerant messages espoused by anti-Muslim groups.”

State Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI): The first Muslim elected to the Michigan legislature, Tlaib wrote Lowe’s CEO Robert Niblock, “I told them I was extremely disappointed that you give credibility to these hate groups.”

Hip Hop mogul (and Buddhist) Russell Simmons purchased ad time during this week’s episode of “All-American Muslim” to counter Loew’s. In doing so, ad time for this Sunday’s show is “now sold out.” The computer hacking group Anonymous also contributed to the effort by “working through 15 layers of security to breach its website,” forcing FFA to shut it down Monday night.

But a reality TV show that lets Americans relate to the lives of Muslims in the United States is an offensive idea to those who want to demonize Islam. The Florida Family Association (FFA) launched a campaign earlier this year to get companies to pull their advertising from the program. FFA claims that 65 of the 67 companies targeted have done this, including home improvement giant Lowe’s and megabank Bank of America:

The Florida Family Association, a Tampa Bay group, has led a campaign urging companies to pull ads on “All-American Muslim.” The FFA contends that 65 of 67 companies it has targeted have pulled their ads, including Bank of America, the Campbell Soup Co., Dell, Estee Lauder, General Motors, Goodyear, Green Mountain Coffee, McDonalds, Sears, and Wal-Mart.

One of the companies that FFA claims pulled commercials, Amway, told the Washington Post that such reports were “misleading” and that it has done no such thing. Lowe’s told the paper that it did indeed pull advertising. “We understand the program raised concerns, complaints, or issues from multiple sides of the viewer spectrum, which we found after doing research of news articles and blogs covering the show,” said Katie Cody, a spokeswoman for Lowe’s.

The Islamic Circle of North America is urging concerned citizens to call Lowe’s and protest their withdrawal of advertising: “We urge the American Muslim community and our friends, family, neighbors and all people of conscience to call Lowe’s CEO Robert Niblock at (704) 758-2084 or Executive Support Mr. Andrew Kilby at (866) 900-4650 and respectfully complain about this decision.”

General Electric spent more lobbying the government than it did in federal income taxes between 2008 and 2010.

Today, thousands of 99 Percenters will march on K Street in Washington, D.C. as a part of an action called “Take Back The Capitol,” taking aim at the lobbying firms that corporate interests use to influence the federal government.

A report released this month by Public Campaign demonstrates just how important it is for Americans to battle corporate special interests and reclaim our democracy. The group’s research finds that thirty big corporations actually spent more money lobbying the federal government between 2008 and 2010 than they spent in taxes. For example, General Electric — one of the top 10 most profitable companies in the world — got a net tax rebate of $4.7 billion during this period. Meanwhile, it spent $84 million lobbying the federal government.

Here’s the full list of the 30 corporations identified and what they paid in federal taxes as opposed to lobbying:

To follow today’s actions, check out Take Back The Capitol’s website, and find instant updates about the protest through the hashtag #99indc. ThinkProgress will be covering today’s events at our 99 Percent Movement special topics page.